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Listen: Former Googler Talks About How Close We Are to 'Brave New World'

September 19, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Technology gives us constant distractions and lets us create our own content to distract others with Facebook posts, tweets and Snapchat exchanges. But will constant distraction be our undoing?

Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google, joined Tuesday’s “The Glenn Beck Radio Program” to talk about how technology is affecting our lives – possibly to our ruin.

He analyzed how distraction is affecting us. With only a finite amount of attention in the world, everyone is competing for it.

“It’s this race to the bottom of the brain stem for whatever works at getting attention,” Harris said.

He and Glenn discussed a potential way to rein in technology, with Harris posing a theory that the energy industry’s practice of decoupling could be helpful.

Glenn was concerned about the implications of government control in that idea.

“It starts to roll into the Big Brother, ‘Brave New World,’” he said. “We’re just in this weird place that I don’t know if mankind has ever been in before, that if we don’t do this right we’re really going to screw ourselves.”

Listen to the full segment for more on our “Brave New World” danger and why media theorist Neil Postman predicted the risk of today’s social media.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Tristan Harris, he is the founder of Time Well Spent. He is a former Google design ethicist. Gave a great -- a great talk on, how do we change this?

Tristan, how are you?

TRISTAN: Glenn, it's great to be here. I'm great. Thank you for having me.

GLENN: So I'm so happy to see that I'm not the only one feeling this way and not the only one trying to figure a way out. But it's almost impossible, at least at my level to -- to even talk to people who are even thinking this way. No, I want to design the website in a way that it gets people back to their own life, faster.

TRISTAN: Right. Yeah. Completely. Well, I have to say, Glenn, I was also really moved by your interview with Dave Reuben, talking about how the race for attention -- when you were on television, and the race for good ratings affected, you know, your own life. And I think this is the thing people miss about the tech industry is that no matter what good intentions, Facebook, Google, you know, Snapchat has, to improve people's lives, they're cut in this race for attention.

And as I said in the TED talk, and as you know so well, it's this race to the bottom of the brainstem, for whatever works at getting attention. And there's no escaping that. Because there's only so much attention. There's only so much time in people's lives, only so many hours in a day.

And it's not growing. So, you know, that the race is only going to get more competitive. And as it gets more competitive, it becomes this race for figuring out what pushes the buttons in people's brains. And so we have to get out of this race for attention.

And like you said, you can't ask anyone who is in the attention economy to not do what they're doing.

You can't tell YouTube, "Hey, stop getting so much of people's attention." You can't tell Facebook, "Hey, stop making your product so addictive." You can't tell Snapchat, "Hey, stop manipulating the minds of teenagers to get them sending messages back and forth and hooking them because they're all caught in this race for attention," which is why we need to reform the system one level up. You have to go outside the system. And I'd love to talk to you about that.

GLENN: So what does that even mean? How do you go one level up? What is one level up?

TRISTAN: Well, it's sort of like the tragedy of the common. So you can't ask any one of the actors to do something different than what they're doing. They need to be able to coordinate their rates for attention.

So, you know, one way to go one level up is to go to the government, which is not very pleasant of an idea. Another way to go one level up is to actually go to Apple. So Apple is kind of like the government of the attention economy. Because they create the device upon which everyone else is competing for attention.

And Google is also sort of a mini government of the attention economy. Because they create kind of the government of who gets the best results, when -- when you search for something.

And Facebook is kind of the government of the attention economy too because they choose who is at the top of your feed. And, currently, they're locked into their own race for attention.

So one of the things is we have to decouple profit from attention. Because as long as those two things are one to one connected, it becomes this race to the bottom. And we actually did this with energy, where there's only so much energy available to sell people. And energy companies used to have this incentive of, I make more money, the more energy you use. So I actually want you to leave the lights on. Leave the faucets on.

And, you know, that created a problem, where -- where, you know, we -- we waste more energy. We waste -- or we pollute the environment, the more money the companies make.

And in the US, we went through a change called decoupling, which decoupled through a little bit of self-regulation among the energy companies, where they basically capped how much money energy companies pocketed directly from the more energy people used. And then the remaining energy -- when you use a lot of energy, all that extra energy, they priced it higher to disincentivize it. And then they actually used that extra profit, not to capture it for themselves, but to collectively reinvest it into renewable energy infrastructure.

And so I'm wondering whether or not something like that couldn't happen for attention, where companies could profit from some amount of attention were that relationship to exist. But then beyond a certain point, what if everyone was reinvestigating in the greater good of the attention company?

Because, you know, right now, 2 billion people's minds from the moment they wake up in the morning -- you know, they're jacked into this environment -- this digital environment that's controlled by three technology companies, like Apple, Google, and Facebook.

GLENN: Tristan. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

TRISTAN: No. Go ahead.

GLENN: Does it -- does it -- does it -- I mean, A, I'm really glad somebody is thinking about this. Because I think about this stuff all the time, and I don't hear anybody really talking about it.

TRISTAN: Yeah.

GLENN: And it's a little hair-raising because what you're even saying starts to roll into the, you know, big brother, Brave New World. I mean, it could so easily go into -- we're just in this weird place that I don't know if mankind has ever been in before, that if we don't do this right, we're really going to screw ourselves.

TRISTAN: No. You know, you're so dialed into this, Glenn. You're totally right. And, you know, I studied this for three or four years. I was a design ethicist at Google, where literally the way I spent every single day studying, what does it mean to ethically steer people's attention?

And it really, like you said, it's the Brave New World scenario combined with the Big Brother scenario. Because whether we want to admit it or not -- you know, again, 2 billion people from the moment they wake up to every bathroom break, to every coffee line, to going to bed, to every back of the Uber or public transportation, you know, people are glued to their phones. We check them 150 times a day.

And, again, because of this race for attention, these technology products are not neutral. Each one, in trying to do whatever it can to get attention.

So they deploy these different persuasive techniques, and it becomes this, you know, amusing ourselves to death, you know, Brave New World scenario.

If you've seen the movie WALL-E, it's like a race to put people with a screen in front of their eyes for as many hours as possible.

GLENN: Yes.

TRISTAN: Consuming for as much as possible, because that's what's most profitable. So it does start to resemble something like the Matrix.

I don't know if you know the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, but in the beginning, he -- Neil Postman, the author contrasts Orwell's vision of the future, which we're all, you know, really ready to oppose. Because it's a form of tyranny. We don't want Big Brother. But then there's this subtler vision of Brave New World that people forget to oppose because there's no face of it. There's no Big Brother.

GLENN: Yes.

TRISTAN: And here's this great line that's -- you know, Orwell was worried about a world where we would ban books. And it says Huxley was worried about a world where no one would want to read a book.

You know, Orwell was worried about the world in which the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley was worried about a world where the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. And, you know, it goes on.

And the point is --

GLENN: We're there.

TRISTAN: Yeah.

GLENN: We are there.

STU: Tristan Harris is with us. Quickly, you had mentioned the manipulation that these companies do for your attention.

And you had a really great example with snap streaks. I don't know Snapchat very well, but can you kind of explain that?

TRISTAN: Absolutely, yeah.

So one thing that I think everybody who uses smart phone in a family is aware of is how this is affecting their kids, especially if they're teenagers.

So Snapchat is the number one way that teenagers in the United States communicate. This is very important. So if you're like me -- you know, I'm 33. You're an adult. You probably use text messaging as your number one way to communicate.

So you live in Texas. And you can imagine living in Snapchat. This is like your dominate way to communicate. And Snapchat figured out a way to hook kids called streaks.

And what that means is they show a number next to every single person that you chat with. And that number is number of days in a row that you continually sent a streak, a message back and forth.

So if you sent a message back and forth 150 days in a row, it shows the number 150 with a higher ball. And it might sound totally innocuous, but it actually causes kids to send all of these empty messages back and forth. They're literally sending photos.

GLENN: Just not to break the streak.

TRISTAN: Just not to break the streak.

GLENN: Wow.

TRISTAN: Just not to break the streak. And they give their password to five other friends when they go on vacation, just because they don't want to lose it.

And so it's like tying two kids -- you know, legs together on a treadmill, on two separate treadmills, and then hitting start. And watching them run like chickens with their heads cut off, passing the football back and forth, just so they don't drop the -- the streak.

And this is, by the way, you know, from a playbook of persuasive techniques that people in the industry know are good at getting people to do things. And you can use it for good.

Like, you can set up a streak for the number of days to the gym that -- the numbers of days you read five pages in a book, that you wanted to make sure you do that habit. So you keep up a streak. It's a powerful motivator.

But what they did is they took this powerful technique, and then they applied it to a vulnerable population. And they applied it to children's sense of belonging with each other. Because now kids define the terms of their friendship, based on whether or not they have a streak or not. It becomes the currency of their friendship.

And so that's what's new about this. People often say -- you know, back in the 1970s, we used to gossip on the telephone all the time. And now if I look at my teenage kids, they're just gossiping on the telephone a different way with Snapchat. There's nothing new or alarming here.

And what's different about this is that your phone in the 1970s didn't have thousands of engineers on the other side of the screen who knew how to -- how to strategically tap two people on the shoulder and make them feel like they're missing out on each other's lives. And to show you -- you know, to have a phone light up and appear in your life exactly when you're most vulnerable.

I mean, for example, it's never been easier to find out that you're missing out on what your friends are doing if you're a teenager.

You know, Snapchat or Instagram benefit if they put that at the top of the feed, not at the bottom, in the same way that Facebook benefits by putting outrageous news at the top of the newsfeed because it's better at getting attention. And so -- go ahead.

GLENN: No. Please, finish.

TRISTAN: Well, so as you said, I don't want to be here dwelling on the problem. I first want to do this because it's important people understand the problem.

And it's honestly one of the biggest problems of our time because it's infrastructure for solving every other problem.

You know, every other problem, health care, climate change, all these things require us to be able to sustain attention and talk about a complex topic.

And if we're just running around distracted all the time and if the entire next generation is hooked and addicted to their devices and we can't -- you know, we don't develop the capacity for patience or complexity or sitting with each other -- sometimes that's uncomfortable, you know -- you know, it's a delicate thing to be a human being.

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.